COURT’S CROSS EXAMINATION DIDN’T SETTLE THE SOLEDAD ISSUE — OR WAGER

Attorney James McElroy has been involved in the Mount Soledad cross case longer than any other lawyer, longer than new college graduates have been alive. He’s always been confident the cross would one day be moved off public land in La Jolla, and he’s even more confident now.

McElroy has so much faith that he once put his money where his mouth is and has been for 23 years: He once placed a bet that the cross would come down.

The stakes weren’t high, but there were witnesses. The bet — burgers and beers to the winner — came in 2005. As his lawsuit crawled through the courts, neither McElroy nor this other guy forgot about it. The other guy is pretty honorable, so one of them will pay up — if and when it’s time.

The other guy is me, and I’ve always figured the cross would stay.

It’s not that I’m overly religious; I was raised a Quaker and married under a chuppah. It’s not that I’m opposed to quote-unquote activist judges; I’ll support any final ruling. I guess it’s just that I’m used to the cross.

One first rose on this site in 1913. A replacement of a replacement has stood since 1954.

McElroy and I made our bet over beers at Downtown Johnny Brown’s outside San Diego City Hall one night when I popped in for dinner and a drink after covering a six-hour City Council hearing on — what else? — the cross.

We’ve stayed in touch over the years, although I no longer write much about the cross. When I did two weeks ago, he emailed to say: “I don’t know how you can be so objective about the Mount Soledad cross case when we both know that you have a Downtown Johnny Brown cheeseburger riding on the outcome.”

Monday, when the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would not hear an appeal of a lower court’s ruling that the cross is unconstitutional, I knew who to call.

That lower court didn’t order the symbol removed, so Monday’s news means it’s remedy-or-removal time at last for the cross. As some wondered how to save it, I wondered how McElroy likes his burgers cooked.

“Fire up the grill, buddy,” he said when we connected.

Now, before sharing where McElroy thinks this case — and this cross — is headed, I feel obligated to say this: There’s plenty of legal maneuvering left. Monday’s decision against intervention wasn’t the first time the Supreme Court has waded into this case. Justice Samuel Alito even wrote that it may not be the last time: “The federal government is free to raise the same issue in a later petition following entry of a final judgment.”

That said, McElroy’s mouth is starting to water.

“I think the needle has moved dramatically closer to resolution,” he said. “I don’t really think anybody wants to fight for 20 years about the remedy phase. ... I hope what’s next is not another 20 years, or I’m going to need false teeth and I’m going to have to gum this cheeseburger to death.”

McElroy filed the case for atheist and Vietnam War veteran Philip Paulson in 1989, when the city owned the cross. Paulson has since died, and McElroy now represents Steve Trunk, another atheist and Vietnam vet. Trunk and a group of Jewish war veterans represented by the American Civil Liberties Union are suing the federal government, which has owned the cross and a surrounding war memorial since 2006.

The U.S. Department of Defense considers the cross a war memorial.

Now it can’t, McElroy said. “It may take a little longer to get resolved, but we are so much closer because nobody can fight about whether it’s constitutional as presently constituted or not,” he said.

So what’s next?

Lawyers and politicians will do what they do, perhaps for years. Maybe a plan McElroy once pushed to move the 29-foot-tall cross 1,000 feet down the road to the Mount Soledad Presbyterian Church will be revived. Maybe not.

“Best-case scenario is resolution in six months by the parties cooperating and reaching an intelligent decision that may not be what everybody wants but is what everybody can live with,” McElroy said.

“Worst-case scenario, the government tries to pull some more shenanigans favoring the Christian religion and favoring the cross, and we have to fight to protect the Constitution, and we’re back in court,” he added. “And then it goes up on appeal, and then it comes back down, and then it goes up on appeal, and then it goes to the Supreme Court again.”

That this may drag on in perpetuity seems plausible to me, but not McElroy. “I’ve called in my order to you a couple times and told you what I wanted on the burger and how I wanted it done,” he reminded me. “But you have smugly suggested, ‘Not so fast.’ ”

Up close, on one of those cloudless and endless San Diego summer days, the Mount Soledad cross is something to see. It’s hard to imagine the day when its recessed concrete won’t be reverse silhouetted against our sky just so.